Autotrix

Edmunds and Wadden operated from The Quadrant in Weybridge, Surrey, close to the Brooklands motor circuit. At the 1911 Olympia show and in its 1912 factory catalog the firm presented two deliberately separate identities: Autotrix for sociable three-wheel cyclecars and Brooklands for conventional motorcycles. The small Autotrix seated two people side by side in a light cane body, described with red upholstery. A front-mounted JAP engine sat immediately below the fuel tank and drove the single rear wheel, while the paired front wheels steered. The approximately 280 lb entry model used a 4 hp air-cooled engine and belt drive, with a 650 x 65 mm rear tyre and 26 x 2½-inch fronts. A larger chassis used a 9 hp air-cooled JAP engine and chain drive; customers could instead order a 6 hp water-cooled Fafnir installation. The powertrain alternatives did not carry surviving independent type names, so the catalog retains transparent 4 HP and 9 HP chassis families and documents the Fafnir as an option. Factory prices, precise displacements, wheelbases, transmissions, brakes, annual changes and production totals are not preserved in accessible period-derived summaries. Manufacture ended by 1914, plausibly overtaken by wartime disruption and the fragility of Britain's early cyclecar market, but an exact closure date and corporate disposition are unknown. Brooklands roadster and racing motorcycles shared the manufacturer and catalog, not the Autotrix badge. Their 1912 range included a clutch-equipped roadster with controlled engine, Druid fork, dropped top tube and pannier tool bags, plus a stripped racing motorcycle with rigid fork and no mudguards. Those two-wheel machines remain outside the automobile catalog. The Autotrix name is unrelated to later Brooklands circuit-associated specials, Bentley Brooklands models, contemporary kit-car 'Brooklands' packages and other uses of the famous venue's name. Two model rows account for all recoverable complete Autotrix road vehicles without incorrectly converting the sibling motorcycle badge into a car marque.

Text adapted from “Autotrix” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗